Douglass was renewed and energized by the outbreak of the war because like his one-time mentor, William Lloyd Garrison, he saw in the nascent conflict as an opportunity to destroy forever the institution of slavery. In the May 1861 issue of Douglass’ Monthly, Frederick Douglass described his plan to accomplish this goal in an essay entitled, “How to End the War.” He laid out his prescription clearly and forcefully in the first paragraph, writing:

Douglass realized the weight of white opinion in the North in May 1861 was against arming even free blacks, let alone slaves, noting an offer of Boston blacks after the Fort Sumter attack to enlist for military service quickly had been rejected. So he made a point that soon would have a significant impact on public sentiment in the free states about slavery: that the Confederacy was putting slaves to work in its war effort. He stated:

Truly, between early April and May 1861, Frederick Douglass was a man transformed. No longer was he David W. Blight’s demoralized man considering emigration, but a passionate and energized leader ready to use his formidable intelligence and eloquence to redeem his country by destroying the institution that had blighted his youth and in which millions of his race were still trapped.

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About Donald R. Shaffer

Donald R. Shaffer is the author of _After the Glory: The Struggles of Black Civil War Veterans_ (Kansas, 2004), which won the Peter Seaborg Award for Civil War Scholarship in 2005. More recently he published (with Elizabeth Regosin), _Voices of Emancipation: Understanding Slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction through the U.S. Pension Bureau Files_ (2008). Dr. Shaffer teaches online exclusively (i.e., a virtual professor). He lives in Arizona and can be contacted at donald_shaffer@yahoo.com